


it starts with a baby and ends with a kiss

by ruluan



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, M/M, also an abrupt ending, and plenty of cheese and cliches, complete and utter ridiculousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruluan/pseuds/ruluan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High School!AU. The boys in Health class together. Awkward classroom assignments. Eames' suggestive innuendo. Arthur's innocent blushing. Go crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it starts with a baby and ends with a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Inception kink meme](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/11005.html?thread=23244285#t23244285) like 2 years ago when I was a young, silly person
> 
> A lot of commas and italics and lack of beta-ness because I have no friends

“In case,” Cobb says, pacing the room, “You all are completely brainless idiots, and manage to knock some chick up, you’d better know how to take care of the kid that comes next.” He directs a squint in Eames's direction. Eames looks left, then right, before realizing Cobb was maybe implying that he was promiscuous. Before he could protest, thought, Cobb continues, “Therefore, I’m assigning you all a project. You’re going to pair up, random assignment, and you’re going to get a baby.”

Everyone’s eyes are directed toward a cardboard box marked “babies” in handwriting that looks like a five-year-old’s. A plastic doll’s arm is hanging out over the side.

“Right! So pairs are, Robert and Saito, Ariadne and – “

“Whoa whoa _whoa_. Back up there.” Robert raises his hands in a defensive gesture. “When you said pairs, I assumed you meant _heterosexual_ pairs. Since, you know, homosexual couples can’t exactly produce babies.”

Eames snorts. “Fischer, you losing your eyesight? There’re only two girls in this class.”

Robert scoffs, then actually takes a minute to look around him. Mal, Ariadne, Yusuf, Eames, Arthur. When did that happen? He voices this out loud.

“It’s really simple. Despite Health being a required class to graduate, Cobb squinted at them and they all ran away.” Ariadne shrugs, chews obnoxiously on her wad of gum.

“What?” Eames cries, “But the squint is _classic_. It’s _hilarious_. You can’t possibly be frightened by it.”

“Well apparently, some people can be. Can we please just get on with assigning partners?” Arthur gripes, tapping his Ticonderoga (he only settles for the _best_ pencils, okay? Even if they are, as Ariadne calls them, _caveman sticks_ ) against his notebook impatiently.

“Yes, what Arthur said.” Cobb waves his hand in an incredibly vague gesture that seems to indicate the process of moving on, then proceeds, “As I was saying. Robert, Saito. Ariadne, Mal. Arthur, Eames. Yusuf. Uh. With me, I guess.”

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Arthur splutters. “How did you manage to make _every single pair_ a gay pair?”

“I don’t know, I said it was random assignment. Can’t change it, that’ll defeat the purpose.” Cobb shrugs, makes another vague hand gesture that seems to want everyone to get with their partner and discuss what they were going to do. Arthur lets out an exasperated huff and glances at Eames. Eames smirks at him.

This was going to be painful.

\----------

“So I’ve decided, this assignment of Cobb’s is completely impossible.” Arthur’s on his cell, lying on his bed. He frowns, kicks his backpack off the surface, then goes on talking. “It basically requires us to _live_ with our partners if we actually want to get an A, since we’re only getting one baby and we can’t very well cut it in half.”

“Lighten up, will you?” Ariadne’s voice sounds tinny on Arthur’s end of the line. “It actually seems like it’ll be kind of, just a little bit, fun.”

“You’re only saying that because you got paired with Mal. Mal can make anything fun.” He scowls.

“Well, yes. That’s true. But you got with Eames!” Ariadne’s excitement is equivalent to Arthur’s annoyance. “You get to like, rescue your child from being flushed down the toilet, or taking up smoking, or having bad fashion sense. But on the bright side, if you two ever got together, you’ve got to admit that your children would be really hot.”

“Ariadne!” Arthur scolds. “Don’t you dare even think about that. Agh, now I can’t get the horrific image of me and Eames getting it on out of my head.”

“Horrific?” Ariadne cackles. “Oh Arthur, you think I don’t notice you staring at Eames all the time, but I do.”

“Wha-–Okay. Yeah. No. No. I don’t even want to talk to you anymore.” He snaps his phone closed without saying goodbye. What was Ariadne’s deal, honestly? Obviously being with Eames was going to be an entirely too stressful experience. He convinces himself he’s not actually just a little bit excited about working with, you know, that really hot kid he’s been kind of sort of not really crushing on for like, five years now, and pretends his cheeks are not heating up.

\----------

“Today you all can actually pick your child out of the box.” Cobb points cheerily to the shabby box. Someone’s crossed out “babies” and replaced it with “Jonathan Swift’s Favorite Snack.” It’s in equally terrible handwriting, but Arthur highly doubts a five-year-old knows who Jonathan Swift was. He grabs a random limb from the box, then pulls and is met with the blue eyed stare of a creepy, orange baby with blonde ringlets. He chucks it at Eames.

“Hey! That’s our child you’re chucking!” Eames admonishes, catching it and patting it on the head.

Arthur frowns. “Our child would never look like this. Blonde, really? And _orange_.” He sits down next to Eames.

“First thing’s first, you guys need to learn how to actually hold a baby.” He looks pointedly at Robert, who keeps turning the head of the doll around. “Babies are not supposed to have their heads on backwards.” Saito reaches over and fixes it.

“Don’t hold it by its feet, arms, or head. It’s best to support its back with your arm.” Cobb demonstrates. Ariadne attempts to imitate him while Mal coos at it. Arthur grabs his baby’s head.

“ _No!_ ” Cobb whirls around and stabs his finger at Arthur. “Perfect example of _doing it wrong_.” He squints. Arthur sits there, paralyzed. Eames snatches the doll away from his partner and holds it the _proper way_.

“That’s better,” Cobb moves on to Robert, who can’t seem to hold the baby without bawling his eyes out.

Eames smirks at Arthur. “Who knew you’d be so bad with children.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “It’s not a child, it’s a doll.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that and we’ll end up with a C on this thing.” He widens his eyes at Arthur, clearly mocking his obsessive need to get good grades. Arthur just frowns, especially when Eames’ attention is directed back to the baby.

“So, what should we name her?” He’s looking down at it with way too much affection. “Oh, I know, we should totally call her Arthur Eames, as a combination of our names!”

“Oh, Jesus.” Arthur closes his eyes. “That’s terrible. A terrible name. Not to mention the fact that Arthur is a boy’s name.”

“It could be a girl’s name, too!” He protests.

“On what planet?” Eames doesn’t even respond, just pulls the doll close and smiles, “Arthur Eames. I like it.”

Arthur totally doesn’t want Eames to look at him like that. Or talk to him in such a tone of voice. Of course not. He looks away. Ariadne catches his eye. She wiggles her eyebrows and mouths, “What a good papa!” while pointing at Eames. In the process, she manages to drop her baby, and she and Mal both burst into tears.

He’s starting to get a headache. 

\----------

Arthur groans, dumping the strange orange thing who has apparently been dubbed Arthur II onto a random counter in his kitchen.

“I don’t want to do this.” He covers his face with his hands. “At all.”

“Well that’s too bad,” Eames says absentmindedly, already opening Arthur’s fridge and searching for something edible. “Because we have to find some baby food to bring to class tomorrow.”

“Why are you even here? I told you I could find the food to feed this – thing – on my own.” Arthur scowls.

“Because, Arthur, you clearly can’t. From what I’ve seen these past few days, you have absolutely no idea how to take care of Arthur II. You tried to feed her baby carrots.”

“What – I still don’t know what’s wrong with that.”

“Obviously, Arthur, since she’s a baby, she doesn’t have any teeth.” Eames pulls out a cup of applesauce from the fridge. “This is acceptable food.”

“They’re baby carrots, I figured they were supposed to be fed to babies. And I have no idea whatsoever where that applesauce came from. Maybe from when I was a baby. Throw it out.” Arthur doesn’t even wait for Eames to do so, standing and grabbing it from him. As he checks for the expiration date, a thought occurs to him. “How do you know so much about taking care of a kid, anyway?”

“Uh, my mum had a phase when she was pregnant with my little sister where she’d buy as many baby books as possible, then never read them. I may or may not have looked at them a bit when I was extremely bored.” When Arthur snorts, Eames protests, “We had so many, it’d be a waste if no one ever even looked at them, okay?”

Still smirking a little, Arthur declares the applesauce as ancient as his great grandfather and suggests a trip to the local grocery store.

\----------

“Yesterday I told you all to bring food you’d feed your babies. Today, you’ll present to the class what you’ve brought and the benefits it gives the consumer.” Cobb sits down and motions for Yusuf to go up first.

“Uh, I brought acetic acid-–"

“No.” Cobb gives Yusuf the squint. Yusuf begins to sweat. “First off, anything with acid in the name is clearly not good for the child. Secondly, don’t think I’m stupid and won’t catch that acetic acid is vinegar, which, also, no. I honestly don’t understand why you would have thought this would be a good idea in any way.”

“But Cobb,” Yusuf whines, waving his bottle of acetic acid around frantically. “Acetic acid helps prevent bladder infections!”

“Yeah, first, you’re not supposed to even drink it. It’s not even a food. Second, it’s only if your child happens to be having problems related to the bladder, not as an everyday meal.” Cobb sighs, then announces to everyone, “Generally, babies eat soft foods that have the proper servings for fruit and vegetables in them, since they lack actual teeth. So let’s all cut the crap–-who forgot their brains at home and brought solid food?”

He despairs when about half the class looks sheepish.

\----------

It’s lunch, and Arthur’s eating outside because it’s a cloudless, breezy autumn day. Unfortunately, the tranquility of it all is interrupted by, predictably, Eames.

“ _Arthur_ , something _terrible_ has happened!” He runs up, gasping for breath and clutching their baby in his hands. “Arthur II has–-she’s lost all her hair!”

Arthur stares at the uneven haircut on the doll. It’s as if someone high had gone at it with scissors, and there are definitely bald spots.

“ _What the fuck did you do_.”

“Nothing!” Eames is indignant. “Though,” He pauses, then mumbles, “Imayhavepossiblygottenguminherhair.”

“Oh God, it’s like those horrifically embarrassing stories that everyone has. The one where the teenage boy blows a bubble with his gum, then it pops and gets _all over_ the girl’s hair, and obviously no one can get it out, not with peanut butter or egg yolk or whatever, so they _cut it_ , and that’s what you’ve done, haven’t you. You’ve made our child go through the pain of her first embarrassing moment.” His sarcasm is palpable.

Eames, on the other hand, looks on the verge of tears. “I _know_ , I can’t believe I did that to Arthur II! It just happened, I was just blowing a bubble – “ He chokes up. Arthur rolls his eyes, but nonetheless attempts to console Eames.

“We’ll just buy her a cute hat or something.”

Before he knows what’s happening, Eames has him locked in a tight embrace. “Oh, that’d be great! And then you and I can get matching hats, and we can be a family of matching hats and – “

Horror overcomes Arthur as he realizes that his worst nightmares have come true.

\----------

“Jesus Christ.” Ariadne can barely talk from laughing.

“It’s really not funny. It’s disgusting and terrifying.” Arthur is thoroughly unamused.

“A _family_ with _matching hats_. Oh God, that’d be _adorable_.”

“Have I ever told you how much I hate you?” He frowns. That wasn’t what he meant to say, it sounded too harsh. Luckily for him, Ariadne doesn’t really give a damn as her giggles continue.

“Arthur, I’m pretty sure you’ve got some serious commitment issues.” When he scoffs, she continues, “No, no, just listen. You can’t stand the idea of a hat family with Eames because you can’t stand the idea of being that close to someone, that you can share something like that so easily. Or maybe it’s just Eames you can’t stand the idea of being close to…”

“Must you always insist on analyzing my every move?” He doesn’t want to admit how close to home she may be hitting; she just spent at least 10 minutes laughing at him and now she’s lecturing him? “When did you get so into this psychological crap?”

He hopes she doesn’t notice the dodging of the question he pulled right there.

“Oh, Mal got me into it!” Fortunately, Ariadne can spend forever and a day talking about her infatuation with her French project partner. Arthur tunes her cheerful chattering out and puzzles over the mystery that is Eames. 

\----------

“Diapers.” Cobb lifts one up to show the class. “You have to know how to use them.”

The class gives a collective groan.

“Hey! Be thankful you don’t have to deal with the disgustingness of the real thing.” He throws each couple a diaper. “Also, we’re a poor public school. Only one diaper per group.”

Arthur holds the mass of white and plastic and baby-smell like he doesn’t know what to do with it. That’s because he doesn’t. Eames snatches it from him, commenting, “Hard to believe that Mr. Perfect is actually _not_ good at everything.”

“Shut up. I’m the farthest thing from perfect.” Arthur rests his chin in his hands as he watches his partner do all of the work.

Eames scoffs, says, small smile gracing his lips, “You’re pretty perfect to me.” Unfortunately for him–-but fortunately for Arthur, who had no idea what to say in response to that–-Cobb walks by in time to hear him, gives him an incredulous look, and scolds him. “Can’t you get anything done without flirting?”

“What?” Eames is indignant. “I honestly don’t understand, when did I suddenly become the womanizer? I went out with maybe _one_ girl in my lifetime.”

“Well,” Ariadne butts into the conversation from across the room, “it probably has to do with that time you thought you had an STD at the beginning of the quarter.”

He flushes. “I thought it stood for something else, okay? Either way, I am not a huge flirt, let’s just get that straight once and for all.”

“But you were just flirting with Arthur?” Ariadne raises an eyebrow. Eames just turns redder.

Arthur thinks the delighted grin on her face is a very bad sign.

\----------

“He likes you.”

“No.” Arthur makes a frustrated noise as Ariadne steps between him and his car.

“C’mon. What he said to you in there? You’d never hear that in a platonic relationship. Hell, you’d never hear it in half the high school ‘romances’ going on at our school. Face it, he’s hot for you.” She forces him to meet her eyes. “Now you have to figure out if _you’ve_ got the hots for _him_.”

Ariadne leaves him in the parking lot, wondering what the hell he’s going to do.

\----------

Arthur paces back and forth, so preoccupied within his own thoughts that he barely notices when his knee bangs against his refrigerator door. He’d gone to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, ended up downing three in about a minute, and now he doesn’t want to go back in there, into his living room, where Eames is audibly somehow holding a lively conversation with their kid. Tomorrow, tomorrow’s the day they’re supposed to talk about how much they’ve learned from the assignment, and they’re supposed to hand their dolls back, and they’re supposed to laugh about their misadventures. They’re supposed to go back to how it used to be, when Eames barely even spared Arthur a glance, when Arthur barely spared Eames a glance, when Mal and Ariadne didn’t whisper and giggle and maybe hold hands, when Robert wasn’t planning on becoming a circus performer in an attempt to break free of expectations. Arthur should be glad. He won’t have to deal with the intangible being of Eames, who can be ridiculously sweet, who can be ridiculously stupid, who can be so many things that Arthur doesn’t know what to make of him.

He really doesn’t know what to do.

“Arthur? Did you drown yourself in the sink by accident?” Eames calls.

Arthur starts, swallows. Takes a step towards the living room, then another.

Eames is saying, “I honestly wouldn’t be surprised at this point. You’re much more careless than anyone could have guessed,” as Arthur enters. He stops behind Eames, swallows again, thinks, _back to how things used to be_ , and _tell him you don’t like him_ , and _I’m not careless_.

But then Eames turns, looking for him, wondering why he hasn’t said anything yet--not a retort or a protestation, nothing. And it’s the look on his face, a mix of contentment and, just, openness, that draws Arthur in, physically, mentally, until he’s a hair’s breadth away from Eames, lips almost brushing, and he thinks, maybe, somewhere down the line, this boy had become such a constant, be it a constant annoyance or constant source of amusement, that he kind of can’t even imagine not _being with him_ for even a second.

And he’s terrified, of Eames, of the gravity of his feelings, the permanence and investment involved in the possibilities of what could happen from this moment on-–

And somehow, Eames--brilliant, silly, strange, happy, Eames--dispels all doubt that could possibly plague Arthur’s mind with a straightforward, “You only just figured it out, didn’t you?”

And right before their lips finally, gloriously meet, he breathes, softly, no words, a simple yet heavy, “I like you.”


End file.
